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Guest post by Dakota Gale, the latest article in his series aimed at amateur adult pianists

I clearly remember the first time I rode Tyler’s, a popular bike trail near me. I walked some rocky uphill ramps, awkwardly landed jumps, and generally hacked my way down it like a noob.

I still had a hell of a fine time.

These days, I’ve ridden Tyler’s dozens of times and know every major feature. I fly down that sucker.

But is Tyler’s more fun, exciting or fulfilling now versus my first time? 

In general, is there a way to develop appreciation and deeper comprehension rather than boredom for a repeated experience?

Travel to the same places. Hobbies we’ve done for years. Meals we’ve made for a decade.

Or piano pieces!

Navigating the creative gamut

Like a new bike trail, the first time I play a piano piece my brain scrabbles to survive, jamming the notes into my brain. I’m walking super rocky sections and scoping out switchbacks, one measure and phrase at a time.

Take Schubert’s Serenade, a song I’ve always loved that I started playing. In my initial efforts, I pushed through the technical challenges of the piece and could “play” it. Then I tabled it for a month, letting the music sink into my synapses. Cue round two, with more nuance and expression…and yet I was barely getting started.

Bridging that gap between what I CAN do and what I WANT to do is the hardest part. With any new piece, I listen to recordings and think, “yup, do that, fingers!” Then I sit down and create some monotone pabulum akin to playing bongo drums with wet laundry. *sigh*

The gap between my expectations and my abilities is frustrating sometimes. Like some truculent kid, I want to play it like a pro, now now now!

After I turn my pre-frontal cortex back on, I can (usually) reframe things. Because truly, I find this so motivating: I’m going to grow not just with new pieces, but enjoy a deep satisfaction revisiting piano works for the rest of my life. Something fresh to discover, to experience.

And dang it, I AM making progress. Even if I’m no master, there’s magic in the journey and daily satisfaction in the learning. I don’t need to be pro to have fun. (Maybe it’s more fun not worrying about earning a living with it?)

Plus, pushing myself on challenging songs pushes me to greater heights on those I already play. It’s the same thing that happens when I ride technical trails on my bike. I may not slip effortlessly through the toughest moves, but that difficulty makes other trails feel even more cruisier in comparison.

Unlike during piano pieces, sometimes I pause mid-climb on a bike to eat…

As piano, as life

I love how this mindset so easily translates to other endeavors or pastimes. We’re different people when we revisit a city or national park, reread a book, or play an old song. Depth, additional context, a slower pace…it all modifies the experience and likely results in a deeper appreciation.

With all this in mind, I’m continuing to actively push myself to share not-perfect work like my beginner drawings and music recordings. (Sharing my writing on my blog starting a decade ago was an early effort in that arena.) 

It’s tough because I want the work to be better, to make insane progress overnight. Sometimes I shake my head at how hard it is to take what’s in my brain and put it on paper or piano.

Whatever. There’s a reason every book on creativity decries perfectionism and Ira Glass from This American Life talks about “The Gap,” that space between what we envision and what appears in reality. I’ll probably always find blemishes and wish-it-were-different aspects of ANYthing I create.

The good news? It creates constant motivation to keep improving, growing, seeking.

That’s a beautiful thing.

As for Schubert’s Serenade? Maybe it’s not perfect, but I’m looking forward to a lifetime of it evolving beneath my fingers.

And if I get frustrated, I can always go rip down Tyler’s on my mountain bike.

When he isn’t playing piano, Dakota Gale enjoys exploring the great outdoors, learning languages and drawing. He also writes about reclaiming creativity as an adult and ditching tired personal paradigms in his newsletter, Traipsing About. He can often be spotted camping and exploring mountain bike trails around the Pacific Northwest.

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Guest post by Dakota Gale, the latest article in his series aimed at adult amateur pianists

Soon after I started piano lessons in 2021, my teacher showed me a clip from a Beethoven Sonata to demonstrate a technique. “Is this piece hard?” I asked? “It’s a Beethoven sonata!” he replied. 

The meaning was clear: they’re ALL hard.

Since then, I’ve listened to the entire series of 32 sonatas, which are a trip through Beethoven’s entire career. They’re simply fantastic.

In his autobiography, masterful pianist Andras Schiff says that he didn’t feel mature enough to learn them until he was well into his professional career. I’ve heard the sonatas called the Bible of music—The New Testament, as compared to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier as The Old Testament. 

So it was with some trepidation, plenty of respect, and low expectations that I decided to step into the ring with Opus 14, No. 1 in E major, his 9th sonata. Sure, it’s a Grade 6 Henle, which I’ve played many times… but a) I haven’t played much classical era music b) it’s 13 pages of music c) it’s fast d) IT’S A BEETHOVEN SONATA.

In short, my expectation stepping into the ring: fast and furious blows to the body from this serious dude:

A quick doodle of Beethoven that I did.

Also, Opus 14 wasn’t my favorite sonata, but I liked it…and the others were technically out of reach at the moment. (Some, forever.) I prooobably should have started with Scarlatti or Haydyn, but just couldn’t motivate myself to learn a piece I wasn’t excited about.

Anyway, I just spent a month doing a first pass on all three movements and here’s my experience. May it help your attempts to learn this piece or others.

My approach to learning Beethoven’s Opus 14. No 1

Fear not, dear reader! I’m not so over-confident as to tackle a big task like a Beethoven sonata without a clear approach. I tried that with other pieces and wound up playing insecurely or poorly.

This time around, my approach was:

  1. Starting with the first movement, I did a basic analysis of structure and harmony, finding the main and secondary themes, development, and recapitulation.
  2. I identified the fast sections that I suspected would take the most time and discussed with my teacher to confirm. For me, those were bars 4-6 and 39-45, 50-56 and the fast arpeggios starting on bar 65 in the first movement. The second movement isn’t so bad, but the third movement is fast and the opening and fast runs halfway through the piece needed some solid hands separate practice.
  3. Using the techniques on memorization from The Fundamentals of Piano Practice, I memorized the entire sonata. It was the first time I’d taken such a dedicated approach and it worked wonders. I won’t go too deep with detail here, but I can’t recommend it enough! 

In short:

  1. I’d play through one bar of music with one hand, keeping the sections short enough that I could bring it up to speed quickly. Then I’d close my eyes and play through it in my head without touching the keyboard.
  2. Reinforce a time or two, perhaps singing the melody or harmony, then switch to the other hand. Repeat… move on to the next bar. Learn a few lines per day, reinforcing them the next day and moving on to other sections.
  3. Using this technique, I could play through the seven-page first movement hands together in my head the first week and the remaining six pages the second week. It felt like magic! (That book is so good.)
  1. At the same time, I practiced the fast sections I mentioned every day. Once I decided on fingerings, I kept the speed fast from the start. If I couldn’t play it at full speed with one hand, I decreased the length of the section. (ala Kenny Werner’s great book, Effortless Mastery.)

  2. After three weeks, with hands separate I could play the entire sonata (movement 1-3) at tempo, so I started putting hands together. The usual brain breaking occurred and I had to slow down to 50-75% tempo, but I trusted the process.
  3. Another two weeks and movements 1 & 2 were close to tempo, with some notable spots where building speed will take time (those fast LH arpeggios in bars 65-75 with octaves in the RH feel like careening madly along without brakes!). Movement 3 is fast and playing at tempo will take another round of revision.
  4. My progress had slowed, not to mention my drive, another indication it was time to set the piece aside for a few weeks and let it rest. Onward! (For me, that meant polishing Chopin’s Opus 9. No 1 for a masterclass.)

At this point, I felt elated that I could do ANYthing with this sonata that had seemed like hopping in the ring against Mike Tyson. I’d survived!  Was it to performance standards? Absolutely not! Did I expect that? Nooope.

Also, was I sick of the sonata? Ohhh yeah, it was time for a break and some lighter fare. I gobbled up a Yann Tiersen piece from his wonderful album EUSA and waded into Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude so I could entertain annoy my wife with the booming middle section. 

Overall, I’m both pleased and surprised how well the piece went. Even better, I grew to enjoy the piece’s nuances and wound up liking it much more than when I started learning it. I also picked up new skills, including:

  1. Better memorizing techniques.
  2. Smoother fast LH arpeggios and Alberti bass technique.
  3. Better staccato playing.
  4. Better multiple voice playing via the fugue-y section. 
  5. Better grasp of how new themes vary, develop and morph.

I definitely expected a much longer process. Luckily, I’m an amateur pianist and don’t need to nail down a piece to perform at a set time. I play for myself and for friends/family. 

As with any difficult piece, my primary goal for round 1 was simply to get the piece into my fingers and brain. The artistry and expression happen during later revision. In fact, as annoying as it is, I’ve found it’s often at least a year before I feel confident performing a piece live! Perhaps you’ve experienced this as well? 

Regardless, I survived my first round with a full Beethoven sonata and hope to play many more of his pieces in the future. Opus 26 beckons with its siren song of variations!

When he isn’t playing piano, Dakota Gale enjoys learning languages (especially Italian) and drawing. He also writes about reclaiming creativity as an adult and ditching tired personal paradigms in his newsletter, Traipsing About. He can often be spotted camping and exploring mountain bike trails around the Pacific Northwest.

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Guest post by Charlotte Tomlinson

January 2025 will mark the 3rd anniversary of the Oxford Piano Weekends, and the thirteenth weekend. I can hardly believe that what started on the back of an envelope in late 2021, has developed into such a fixture in the piano course market that pianists return again and again.

We started in 2021 with the legacy of Covid and all the social and musical anxiety that came with that. It was essential to find a way of getting people to know each other quickly so I devised a mini workshop to be held before supper on the first evening, in which people get into pairs to chat about a particular musical and performing issue. Within a short space of time, the conversations are animated, social anxiety disappears and people feel relaxed and comfortable. By the time we start the evening session, a united and supportive group has already established itself.

It can’t be underestimated how important this group bonding is. A good number of pianists who come on the Oxford Piano Weekends struggle with performance anxiety and physical tension, and feeling emotionally safe within the group is essential to move through these issues.

I used to have crippling performance anxiety and now I really enjoy performing, something that would have been previously unimaginable. The weekends have helped me immeasurably.

Right from the start, Oxford Piano Weekends have had a wonderfully diverse pool of advanced and committed pianists taking part: bankers, medics, piano teachers, lawyers, choir directors, pianists returning after many years, battered and bruised pianists from a legacy of harsh teaching, students preparing for final recitals and many, many more. Pianists come from all over the UK, as far afield as Dublin, Finland, Malta and most recently, Canada.

The weekend is a chance to reflect deeply on your playing with expert guidance to take away and improve your practice.

On any one Oxford Piano Weekend, the numbers are kept deliberately low with six or seven as the ideal. Each pianist has twenty minutes teaching within the group, in rotation over the weekend, and it’s extraordinary how much can be packed into that short time. I listen to each pianist to see what they need, and then make sure that my response is valuable not just for the pianist themselves, but also for the group. Participants learn so much from watching and listening to each other, seeing their own challenges reflected in other pianists and then observing that pianist transform in front of their eyes.

A truly wonderful weekend. Charlotte is so caring, and teaches with such empathy, understanding & musical knowledge and expertise.

And what’s more important than the meal times? Homemade, tasty, nutritious food with free flowing wine in the evenings, the now-famous homemade flapjacks for coffee breaks, all provide a wonderful back drop for lively, stimulating conversations among like-minded people. They truly are full and rich weekends, and I, for one, come away at the end of each one feeling exhilarated and all ready to go for the next one.

Next weekend: January 17th -19th 2025

For more details go to: https://www.charlottetomlinson.com/oxford-piano-weekends

Watch a podcast with Charlotte Tomlinson and The Cross-Eyed Pianist

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Guest post by Dakota Gale. The latest article in Dakota’s series Notes from the Keyboard, aimed at adult pianists

I recently attended a piano performance, during which I spoke with a 92 year old woman sitting next to me. She’d played and taught piano for decades. When I mentioned that I take lessons online, her eyes widened. “ONLINE lessons? But…that is the most amazing thing!”

She’s not the only one surprised. “Wow, you take lessons online?” is a common response from most people, even after the nuclear proliferation of pandemic Zoom meetings.

Yep, ever since I began taking lessons in spring of 2021, I’ve done them online. My teacher, Antonio, is located in southern Brazil; I’m in the Pacific NW in the U.S, thousands of miles away. And it’s not just me; plenty of people do it, including:

  • Those looking for specific expertise (e.g. Chopin etudes from a professional)
  • Those being careful while going through chemo or with a disease affecting their immune system.
  • Those who travel a lot (tougher if you’re flying, obviously)
  • If you have a favoured, dear teacher, but one of you moves, going online allow you to continue lessons.

Me and Online Lessons

For me, initially I took online lessons because of two things: to save money and to avoid COVID.

Since then, I’ve seen additional benefits. For one, they’re much more time efficient. No travel across town! For parents, I imagine this would be a huge benefit since you’d avoid shuttling kids around. (Actually, one of my friend’s kids is taking lessons with Antonio.)

I travel fairly often and like to keep lessons going. In fact, I’m currently rolling around the Pacific NW with my wife for three months in a Airstream travel trailer. Between mountain bike rides, hikes, and hanging with friends, I’m both continuing to play consistently and still taking my weekly lesson. Courtesy of Starlink satellite internet and a digital Kawaii piano, I’m not skipping a beat.

When my teacher is on vacation, I’ve also taken lessons with professionals such as Grzegorz (Greg) Niemczuk, who I found on YouTube. You might be surprised how many YouTubers offer lessons (a friend takes lessons with the popular Heart of the Keys YouTuber.)

You know what makes piano better? Playing outside!

Beyond all those boring logistical things, Antonio being Brazilian brings a fun perspective to my experience. (I’ve learned a few choice phrases in Portuguese, for one!) I’ve also learned about (and love!) Brazilian music that I would otherwise not know, including tangos, the music of Tom Jobim and Ernesto Nazareth, and folk songs arranged for piano.

It inspired me to start a listening quest of different genres and international composers that has deepened my relationship to piano. Perhaps a local teacher would have provided that, but certainly it would have been different.

The nuts and bolts of online lessons

For those wondering how this is possible, allow me to describe the situation:

  • Antonio uses a Yamaha grand piano to teach. On it, he has four cameras for his face, top down on his hands, sideways on his hands, and another on his pedal. He even uses software that allows the camera to track his hands (AI magic!).
  • The sound quality is quite good–the nuances he can hear and comment on astonish me.
  • For my setup, I use a different system depending where I am. At home, it’s my computer with a webcam plus my phone on a stand looking straight down at my hands. While traveling, I just go with my phone on a small tripod set up to the side and occasionally my laptop in front of me. It works great.

The benefit of all this: the only time I’ve missed a piano lesson is when I’ve taken bikepacking trips. I challenge you to carry a full-size digital piano through the mountains…no thanks. A pianist needs to take a break from the keyboard SOMEtimes!

Resources:

To find an instructor, just type “piano lessons online” into any search engine. A few popular services: Superprof or Wyzant; a fellow traveler I met on this trip used Preply to find her ukelele instructor. (If you want to work with Antonio, just ping him on Whatsapp at +55 48 9181-9164.)

Cheers to piano on the road!

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